I’VE THAT SCENT OF SHEER STORY POTENTIAL CLINGING TO THE INSIDE OF MY NOSE.

And it is wonderfully sweet.

I’d actually like to take a little moment to say I’m so happy that these challenges seem to get people writing and I’ve seen more than a few folks sell-through stories based on these challenges, which makes the brittle broken snow-globe that I call my heart twitch and shine for one second.

Anyway, let’s get to it.

All you need to do this week is to use a d20 or a random number generator to consult the table at the bottom of the document to roll for a story’s title. It’s a two-part title (meaning, two random numbers 1-20) and whatever title you get must fit the story you write for it.

It’s still your copyright. You can do what you want with the story even after it is publicly posted. Unless Chuck changes his terms of service and makes everybody assign their copyrights to him, like Facebook does.

I sincerely doubt any publisher would count this as that unless I literally posted the story on my blog. This is why I ask that people post their stories at their blogs. I don’t own it and claim zero rights to it.

You may indeed be right, but I’ve had shorts rejected since they were on my blog. Plus, the evil amazon spee-ider bot sometimes flags self-pub stories that are enrolled in KDP and available for free on a blog.

These were the kind of issues I was considering. I guess if I was pitching something I’d already posted I’d probably extend or tweak it somewhat.

Rebecca Douglass
January 11, 2014 @
1:50 AM

I would want to expand and tweak my FF in any case, to make stories more in keeping with standard short story length. Actually, doing that to a bunch of my flash fiction blog posts is on my to-do list for this year.

Rebecca Douglass
January 10, 2014 @
10:30 AM

“Cartographer’s Potion.” I will have some fun with this.

Great collection of words this week, Chuck–almost every title people have come up with is something I would like to write!

Far be it for me to be a rules lawyer (you write what you wanna write!), but you’ve chosen two words from one list, when the letter of the law is to choose one from each and pair them together. But if you got a story for “Griefstruck Cerulean,” by the gods, write it.

I liked it, too – sweet idea, well executed. I can picture the characters, the Encyclopedia included, and I really enjoyed picturing James’s face when he got “Breaker Morant” right. I would not have guessed it was your first time out.

I liked the beautiful comfort of this story. The established setting at the beginning of the story was strong and I liked how you showed us that before you revealed that it was the day of the funeral – good job for your first story ever!

Yeah, 1000 is the upper limit. You don’t have to hit it. What’s more, no one is giving grades on these. I’ve been known to hit 1200 words and Chuck hasn’t come and hunted me down yet. Mostly, I think 1000 words is about as much as most people are willing to read on a blog.